


sometimes regretting

by PsychicBananaSplit



Series: dreary and cloudy days [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, Fluff and Angst, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Insomnia, Internalized Homophobia, Internalized racism, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pseudo-Incest, References to Depression, Self-Denial, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-07 01:24:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18400280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsychicBananaSplit/pseuds/PsychicBananaSplit
Summary: Sometimes, Ben wishes Klaus would leave him alone. He regrets ever thinking that.Sometimes….Sometimes, Ben wants to die. It’s not a thing that he’s proud of.





	sometimes regretting

Sometimes, Ben would wake up in the middle of the night, and stay up. With Vanya. 

For Five.

Ben knows for a fact that Five hated--hates,  _ hates, present day _ \--his guts. Or, lack thereof, haha. He can’t think of anything that set him off, but he just  _ despises  _ him. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re so divergent from one another. Different as day and night. White and black. Five, and Six. 

Sometimes, he would wake up in the middle of the night to sneak to the kitchen, nick some bread and marshmallows and peanut butter from the shelves. He would bring three fluffer-nutter sandwiches, one for Vanya, one for himself, one for Five. They always left Vanya’s lamp on, switching it twice before leaving it on for the rest of the night. Most often than not, the sandwiches would be lost on the floorboards under her bed to mold and rot. The light would become less light, less homey orange and more of a burnt shade of yellow. Rotting with the sandwiches. Rotting like his mind. After the constant disappointment from not gaining sight of Five for a little while after a year, Ben grew bitter with the idea of him coming back, and started acting like a complete asshole to Vanya. 

Sometimes, Ben would wonder what spurred him on to support his sister in trying to find their seemingly lost brother. Was it something that distracted him from the pain? From them? Or, was it him trying to bond with Vanya? 

Sometimes, Ben wonders if he was nicer to everyone, if he didn’t shut Klaus and Vanya out, if he wasn’t so bent by their father’s rule, if he wasn’t such a  _ pushover,  _ such a _  back-bender,  _ such a  _ daddy’s boy,  _ that things would’ve ended up different. If he had  _ talked,  _ if he had  _ listened  _ to them, if he had  _ understood,  _ then  _ none of this  _ would have ever happened. 

Sometimes, Ben would wake up in the middle of the night, and stay up. With Vanya, For Five. And, after he woke up the next morning, he would hate himself even more.

 

Sometimes, Ben would stay up the entire night and listen to Klaus’ playlist when he stopped visiting Vanya in what was supposed to be his sleeping time. He couldn’t sleep all that well in the first place; what, with the creatures coiled in his stomach and their restless chatter? Or, was it Klaus finally getting home at two in the morning with bruises on his wrists, his hips, blood on the inside of his thighs? Who would help him if he was sober when that had happened? Certainly not Father, and  _ certainly  _ not any of the others. All of their lives together, and the entirety of it all was full of being hated and ignored for Klaus. At times, their hate, disdain, reluctance to help Klaus, overall mistreatment was blatant. It really hurt when they tried to mask it with something else, because, of course, Klaus could see it clearly that they didn’t want to help him. 

Sometimes, Ben couldn’t even shut his eyes. No matter the length of Klaus’ sleeping playlist, filled with gentle acoustic versions of Queen, or just Freddie Mercury singing with the piano (Klaus had a thing with Queen, he still does), Ben’s brain would just be on overdrive. With “Love Of My Life” ringing in his ears, repeatedly playing the perfect harmony of the second verse in his head, he would take special care to clean Klaus’ wounds from that night, no matter how grotesque. No matter how painful it would be to pull bits of glass out of Klaus’ jagged cuts, or the remains of a needle broken into his skin, or holding his hair above his head as he puked his guts out. Cradling him to his own chest as he cried himself to sleep, the absolute horrors flashing before his vision and sending him into the deep Pacific of panic. 

_ Please bring it back. _

Sometimes, Ben would stay up to watch Klaus sleep. Not in a creepy way, I assure you, but he likes to watch Klaus when he sleeps because it calms him. The summertime night air blowing in through the open window, through the curtains, drying the sweat on his forehead and brushing his hair back. It would do the same to Klaus. The endless waves of his newly-washed hair would practically glow in the light of the moon, and it would visually dry. A slow process, sure. Ben likes to watch Klaus breath, the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest rocking and reminding Ben of what he lost. What he  _ wanted  _ to lose. 

Sometimes, Ben  _ could  _ go to sleep. But, all his dreams would be plagued of all that he killed. To the terrorist in the school to the bomber in the library, robbers in the bank, murderers on their way to another victim. Pedophiles, sex offenders. But, no matter how many rapists he found (killed) he would never,  _ ever  _ go out to try to find those  _ monsters  _ that did anything to Klaus. Simply because he told him not to. He said that it didn’t matter any more. 

_ It sure as hell mattered to him, though. _

Sometimes, the insistent murmur of Them would startle him awake. They didn’t speak in English, nor did They speak in any other language Ben was familiar in. But, he somehow understood Them soothing him with false concern for his health, fake acts of kindness. It made him  _ sick.  _ Fake acts of kindness, what people only ever showed the seven siblings that even their  _ own mothers  _ didn’t want. 

Well, that wasn’t so fair to assume. Maybe, some of those unsuspecting, very much unpregnant mothers didn’t have the financial situation they would’ve needed to raise a child. Or, maybe they would’ve died if they were kept. Or, maybe, the mothers died during childbirth. 

Any way that happened, there must’ve been some women that didn’t want them at all. Not for money’s sake, or for their child’s sake, or their own sake, just simply didn’t want them. 

Fake acts of kindness. What people only showed to Klaus. Exception: Ben.

Sometimes, Ben would stay up the entire night and listen to Klaus’ playlist of Queen to lull himself to sleep, though fitfull, and possibly not even succeeding. 

 

Sometimes, Ben would lie. He lies a lot, actually. But little lies, really. The occasional “That’s fine,” or, “Yeah, sure.” Sometimes he would lie big ones too, like the ones about him and Klaus, and the evidence of Father abusing them. The biggest lie he ever told, however, was that he was fine. That he was happy, smiley, glad-to-be-alive,  _ feeling _ alive,  _ fine.  _

_ “You okay, Ben?” Vanya would ask. _

_ “Master Benjamin, are you feeling alright?” Pogo would question. _

_ “Hey, Ben, you okay over there?” Diego would tease. _

_ “Ben, are you happy?” Klaus would worry. _

_ “I’m fine.”  _ Was the biggest bluff he ever told, to the people he most cared about. Klaus, Vanya, Diego, Allison, Five, Pogo, Mom. 

He wasn’t an avid liar, nor was he a good one. But that one, those two words slipped out of his mouth uncontrollably. It was a default setting in his flawed system. He was born broken, and was just broken more in their unfortunate lives of death, despair, destruction, despondency. There was never a time in his own life where he was offered to get fixed, to  _ be  _ fixed. He was a glitch, a computer virus, something starting small that only grew into one, big,  _ useless, unimportant,  _ **_ugly, hideous, dangerous_ ** **_beast_ ** that nobody ever wanted. 

**_Ugly, hideous, dangerous._ **

**_UglyHideousDangerous_ ** Ben Hargreeves. The  **_Horror_ ** _.  _ Merely a circus act of transformation into an  _ ugly, hideous, dangerous beast  _ in front of millions. Earning Father some money, and in return? Being locked up in a cage, being sent animals like lambs to slaughter, only  _ that _ would’ve been a much more pleasant way to die. 

Sometimes, Ben would lie. He lies a lot, actually.  

 

_ “Are you happy, Benji?” _

**_“Are you happy, Benji?”_ **

 

Sometimes, Ben can’t look in the mirror. Not only because of Them, but of what  _ he  _ looked like. He was raised with a Hispanic brother, an African-American sister, a German brother, a Russian sister, and two that they didn’t know of yet. They weren’t the beacon of diversity, seeing as they all weren’t exposed to the  _ real world.  _ But when Ben was a boy he would study books on wars, and the one that had the most impact on him was the Korean War. He would look in the books and he would look in the mirror and he would see the  _ same eyes,  _ in the black-and-white, grainy pictures, he would almost see the  _ same skin tone.  _

Thirty-nine years before he was born.  _ Thirty-nine years.  _ What are the chances of his unknown mother, possibly a little girl at the time, possibly being held in her mother’s womb, possibly wasn’t even  _ conceived, _ didn’t perish during the war and save him the trouble of committing suicide?

Sometimes, Ben couldn’t look at his own reflection. It filled him with such self-hatred, and shame, and  _ suicidal tendencies  _ that he wouldn’t be able to get out of his own room. It was the same with masturbation, his own sexuality, liking girls  _ and boys  _ equally. He would touch himself, thinking of a cute girl that he saw in the crowd when he was being driven by in the limo, long blonde hair and light blue eyes that somehow got cropped down, darkened, changed. Soon, when he was close to finishing, rapidly thrusting in his own hand, he would envision a young man in a uniform, curly black hair slicked back with grease and sweat, green eyes shadowed with pleasure, the cardigan rumpled and the suit unbuttoned and the shirt untucked and  _ god,  _ he was wearing a  _ skirt-  _ before his eyes would shoot open, he would think about what he was doing, and the shame trickled back into his chest, clogging up his lungs and causing him to rip his slick-covered hand away and squeeze his thighs together, his hard-on dying between them, and he would shut himself in the bathroom and cry. His head would be circling with  _ wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong. _ He would look at himself and only see the Korean War and bisexuality and a  _ faggot. Ugly, hideous, disgusting, faggot.  _

Sometimes, Ben would look in the mirror and only see racial and homophobic slurs against himself. At least he wasn’t hurting anyone else other than his own mind. 

 

Sometimes, Ben wishes that Klaus would leave him alone. The same way that Klaus would wish Ben left him alone. The endless talking, the endless counseling. The endless chain of having to save Klaus from another pill or a puddle of his own piss or from a motel, with silk ties and money and drugs all around him and he just  _ wants to go home, Ben, please.  _

Ben knows that he can’t blame Klaus. He sees them too, now. The ghosts. 

He  _ can’t  _ blame Klaus, because he’s all that he has left. His rock. His anchor. Holding him in the great big sea of depression, of anxiety. He can’t go back to that, he  _ can’t.  _ And, just as Klaus can’t go back to drugs, they will stay together, as each other’s rocks.

Sometimes, Ben wishes that Klaus would leave him alone. He regrets ever thinking that.

Sometimes….

Sometimes, Ben wants to die. It’s not a thing that he’s proud of. 

He’s already died once, and he hurt  _ everyone  _ by doing it. He shouldn’t want to do it again; take all the pills in the cabinet just to numb the pain, then go on a mission two minutes later, to fall unconscious and lose control, Them ripping his stomach, his chest, his throat to shreds. Blood splattering on the walls, the floors, the ceiling, upwards of the stairs, covering his eyes and his mouth and his nose but  _ he’s already dead.  _ It doesn’t matter that he’s suffocating, drowning in his own bloody mass, he stopped breathing altogether a  _ long  _ time ago. 

The thing is, he just wanted to escape. To escape the sleepless nights, the mirror, the lies, his love for Klaus that  _ shouldn’t be there.  _ Wrong, wrong,  _ wrong.  _

And, the thing is, now being resurrected and all, they’re all back. Some never went away. He can now see himself in the mirror, he has to sleep like a  _ normal human being  _ again, he has to start talking to the others, which means lying. The whole cycle starts up again.

He never really stopped loving Klaus, and even though he’s openly pansexual, Ben can’t shake the feeling of  _ wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong  _ that looms over him anywhere he goes. 

 

_ “Are you happy, Benji?” _

 

“Ben, are you okay?”

Ben looked over at Klaus. He was standing, in the door, looking on worriedly at Ben. Who was on the floor, crouched over a hidden stash of sleeping pills and a razor. His wrists were already bleeding. It was a miracle that it didn’t get everywhere on the walls. His eyes are red and puffy, cried-out, never venturing into the blissful land of  _ sleep.  _

Ben thought he was going to puke. He wanted to say that he was  _ fine,  _ yes, he was  _ fine.  _ But, this time around, the words couldn’t come out. His mouth opened and closed, without saying anything, and Klaus re-worded his question;

“Ben, do you need help?”

And there. That’s when the dam broke and unleashed a waterfall of tears down his face. Gasping, crying out,  _ please, help me, please,  _ but not in actual words.  _ Please, help me, I’m drowning down here. Help me! _

Klaus stiffens, not knowing what to do. Through his tears, Ben just manages to choke out, “Please,  _ Klaus.” _

A very warm, soft body is thrown on his own, headphones are shoved on his ears, the razor and the pills get pulled away from him and Klaus’  _ bloody  _ hands are on his face, brushing the hair back like the air on cool summer nights. Soothing, caring. “Love Of My Life” carrying it’s way through the wires and into his brain and putting him into a dreamless sleep on the bathroom floor. He wakes up when Klaus carries him to his room, but he goes back to sleep when he’s in his bed. Surrounded, covered not in his blood, the mirror turned to the walls and the self-hate buried deep in his core, not fully gone but to be unleashed another day. But covered in  _ Klaus.  _ His fresh, fruity smell with a musky undertone assaulting his senses in a not-so-bad way. 

Enveloped in Klaus’ arms, he gets sleep, finally. 


End file.
